To what extent can one reduce the 'essence' of an object to that of its fundamental parts? — rachMiel

I don't like the historical notion of essence. I like talking in terms of existential dependency. One can reduce something(not necessarily an object) by virtue of looking at what all those somethings have in common with one another, as a means for gleaning knowledge about the things themselves that is not at all obvious otherwise...

One key...

The fundamental parts must exist in their entirety even when they are not in the combination of the thing being reduced.

Well, that's very much the view of Advaita Vedanta, as you know - everything is Self. But Indian and Greek philosophies were very different in this respect. The Greek philosophers were on the whole more oriented towards naturalism; the Vedic seers were much more concerned with the cause of suffering and spiritual liberation, moksa. There are overlaps but it takes a lot of digging to find them.

So I would say that the sentence in question is meaningful (or viable if you want to put it like that) within the context within which it was situated. There, 'everything is Self' is a natural expression of the 'bliss of being' sat-chit-ananda. There are passages in the Upanisads about the Self in all beings, all being the same self.

But in the context of modern Western culture, the underlying worldview is very different, the 'one substance' being matter or at least something physical in nature. I suppose it is also a kind of monism, but it's a materialistic monism, where the 'one substance' is not 'cit' but dumb stuff. So materialism also believes that we're all 'made of the same stuff' but that 'stuff' is basically inert matter. So, I don't know if the kind of question you're asking is really something that modern philosophies bother much with; I think overall Sartre's 'existence before essence' holds sway (although the sense in which DNA amounts to essence might be an interesting one to consider).

Sorry about the circumlocution but I really think it is required by the kind of question you're asking. I think maybe it's a consequence of the way ideas from all kinds of traditions are mingling in today's culture.

How deep/close is the relationship between an object and its most fundamental building block? — rachMiel

A whole is not identical to any of its parts. A whole and its part are two different objects. A whole is a collection of its parts.

To what extent can one reduce the 'essence' of an object to that of its fundamental parts?

(To paraphrase a well-known metaphor:) Let's say you have three solid gold rings. One is an old family heirloom, handed down through five generations. One is a simple flat band sold by a jewelry chain store. One is a striking piece of wild ring art made by a local craftsman.

To what extent are these three rings all just (different shapes of) gold? — rachMiel

If by 'essence' you mean 'material', you can say fairly accurately that the 'essence' of the gold rings is the same as the 'essence' of the pieces of gold they consist of. Note however that gold is not a fundamental 'essence' because if you broke a gold atom into its constituent subatomic particles, these would not have the 'essence' of gold.

A whole is not identical to any of its parts. A whole and its part are two different objects. A whole is a collection of its parts. — litewave

See the below

The fundamental parts must exist in their entirety even when they are not in the combination of the thing being reduced. — creativesoul

There’s an analogy in holograms - take a holographic image and divide it, and instead of two pieces with half the image in each, you end up with two smaller [and lower-res] pieces of the same image. Very important principle.

To what extent is it 'valid' to say: Their forms are different, but in essence they are both just marble. — rachMiel

Essence is a form, not the matter. The form of a thing is "what" it is. When we come to know things we abstract their essence, and this is an instance of "what" they are, a form which exists in the mind. The matter stays in the thing and we never properly get to know it, we only know its forms. So it can never be valid to say that the essence of a thing is its matter.

Yes it’s an Advaita question. And yes, both the question and an appropriate answer to it are context-bound. And one more time yes, the disconnect in this thread between what I am trying to ask and what most people think I am asking is due in large part to all these different traditions, ideas, and worldviews having been thrown willy nilly into a big stone soup pot and swirled around.

I guess I’m trying to use western philosophical tools to investigate the nature of the eastern (particularly Vedic) concepts of paramartha or ultimate truth. But since I am so ignorant about western philosophical tools, my investigation keeps running around in circles!

See the below

The fundamental parts must exist in their entirety even when they are not in the combination of the thing being reduced. — creativesoul — Wayfarer

One could argue that once the parts cease being the parts of a particular whole, they are no longer the same objects they used to be; they stopped existing when the whole they composed stopped existing. That's because their relations to other objects have changed, and when an object's relations change, its identity changes too. An object's identity is inseparable from how the object is different from other objects and these differences constitute the relations of the object to other objects.

But if the parts don't change "too much" after the dissolution of the whole they composed, they can be regarded, "for practical purposes", as the same objects they used to be.

There’s an analogy in holograms - take a holographic image and divide it, and instead of two pieces with half the image in each, you end up with two smaller [and lower-res] pieces of the same image. Very important principle. — Wayfarer

Well, the pieces have a lower resolution than the original image so they are clearly not identical to the original image.

"The (apparent) variety is merely different names and forms of consciousness."

What I'm trying to get at in this thread is the viability of the above sentence. An elephant, a rock, and a memory of childhood ... can they all be reduced to being merely different names and forms of the same thing, consciousness? Or do objects possess an ultimate (essential) uniqueness that goes beyond this underlying sameness? — rachMiel

I was not addressing consciousness in my post, but the idea that the whole is convertible with tits parts.

As for consciousness, I see no reason to think that any material being we know has subjective awareness other than humans -- and certainly not rocks.

We have different ideas ("forms of consciousness") because objectively different kinds of things act on us in objectively different ways, and their action on our sensory system gives rise to our neural representations of them. We call our awareness of these representations "ideas."

"The (apparent) variety is merely different names and forms of consciousness."

What I'm trying to get at in this thread is the viability of the above sentence. An elephant, a rock, and a memory of childhood ... can they all be reduced to being merely different names and forms of the same thing, consciousness? Or do objects possess an ultimate (essential) uniqueness that goes beyond this underlying sameness? — rachMiel

Every two objects have some identical properties and some different properties; in this sense they are both same and different but never identical (meaning that they differ in at least one property, otherwise they would not be two objects but one).

If you are looking for the most general (universal) property, a property of every object, then we can call this property "objectness", "identity", "existence", or "logical consistency". Like any property, this property is a non-spatiotemporal, abstract, general object that is "instantiated" in other objects. These other objects can be properties (meaning that they themselves are instantiated in other objects) or concrete objects (meaning that they are not instantiated in other objects). The instantiation relation seems to be a primitive (unanalyzable) relation, like when a general triangle is instantiated in a particular triangle. It is also known as "exemplification"; it is a kind of manifestation or expression.

Or maybe you are not looking for the most general property but for the smallest objects that compose all other objects or for the biggest object that is composed of all other objects ("composition" is a different relation than "instantiation" but I think it is equally primitive). First, it is not clear whether there exists a smallest or biggest object, as composition might go on infinitely in both up and down directions, unless it would be logically inconsistent (which we may never know due to Godel's second incompleteness theorem, if I'm not mistaken). Second, in composition there seems to be a particular kind of similarity between a part and a whole, in that the identities (or "essences") of the parts are somehow subsumed into the identity of a single whole, or differentiated from the whole.

Does it make sense to say: "X is really just Y" ? — rachMiel

I think it makes sense, but I think this is the wrong question. I think the question should be "is it useful?", not "does it make sense to ask this?". If X is a galaxy cluster, and Y is "quark", does it help your understanding of astronomy to ask if "A galaxy cluster is really just quarks?" Equally, does your answer to that question help? I suggest it doesn't.

How deep/close is the relationship between an object and its most fundamental building block? — rachMiel

I finished a while ago Object-Oriented Ontology from Graham Harman, and you might want to check it out, as it deals a lot with this problem. There's also Ian Bogost's Alien Phenomenology, which might be of interest.

In mereological context, OOO will denounce both "x is really y" & "y is really x" as strategies to devaluate objects. You have mainly brought up the issue that "x is really y", which would constitute what OOO calls "undermining" : claiming that an object is a compound manifestation of other, smaller objects or forces, and that the phenomenal object we experience is somewhat not the real thing.

The problem you brought up is probably the most common example of undermining, a reduction through scientific or empirical means, but there are others ; when someone claims that "the world is mathematically structured" ; when they commit to either idealism or monism ; when they agree to panpsychism.

So, to answer your question, while the relation between subphenomenal components and phenomenal objects is close, it is not a reducible relation. "X is really just y" is an example of folk science, and can be useful as a linguistic form to share information about the object while specifying that the attributes we describe aren't phenomenally available. But anyone who wishes to produce a more sophisticated ontology will have to address both overmining and undermining.

One could argue that once the parts cease being the parts of a particular whole, they are no longer the same objects they used to be; they stopped existing when the whole they composed stopped existing. That's because their relations to other objects have changed, and when an object's relations change, its identity changes too. — litewave

That's just not true. Take an apple out of an apple pie:It's still an apple despite it's no longer being a part of an apple pie. The apple pie is still an apple pie as well.

An object's identity is inseparable from how the object is different from other objects and these differences constitute the relations of the object to other objects.

No. Differences do not constitute relations. To quite the contrary, relations are existentially dependent upon different things.

I'm not sure if this was brought up, but, don't questions like these end up question begging and in some manner or form are really just a derivative of the Sorites Paradox?

I dont see why, a priori, identity couldnt be considered a relation. A is identical to A, thats the basis for the determination of all further relations, no?

The solution to the ontological question is simply to considerna object and its attributes and relations to be correlated, and not coconstitutives.

I dont see why, a priori, identity couldnt be considered a relation. A is identical to A, thats the basis for the determination of all further relations, no?

The solution to the ontological question is simply to considerna object and its attributes and relations to be correlated, and not coconstitutives. — Akanthinos

I'm not sure what the above has to do with what I claimed. I objected to saying that differences constitute relations.

If identity is a relation, and its most often presented to me as such, then differences (or specific non-identical attributes) should also constitute relations, no?

No. Relations are 'between' different things.

What does the law of identity have to do with this? I see nothing and could effectively argue that point if you'd like.

"A is identical to A" is a customary linguistic practice. We partake in this practice by virtue of positing an undefined entity in two separate instances - all the while for the sole means of drawing an equivalence between them. It's an equivalence expression. It's not meant to say anything else. This is perfectly acceptable when we're talking about the linguistic tool often referred to as the 'law' of identity.

The problem is that - all by itself - "A=A" is utterly meaningless at best and nonsensical at worst. Laws cannot be either. Thus, it behooves us all to acknowledge the brute fact that the law of identity is more than the mere expression "A=A".

The law of identity is a metacognitive tool that when used properly facilitates clear, meaningful, intelligible, and coherent language use. Metacognitive tools are existentially dependent upon language itself, for there can be no thinking about thought and belief if there is not already something to be isolated, named, and subsequently talked about. Thinking about thought and belief is an activity that is existentially dependent upon something to think about(pre-existing thought and belief).

Brute fact: The law of identity owes it's very existence to language.

p1.Whatever does not owe it's existence to language cannot... owe it's existence to language.

The law of identity does.

Not all relations do.

It only follows that not all relations are existentially dependent upon the law of identity. So, with that in mind I want to revisit the following claim...

A is identical to A, thats the basis for the determination of all further relations, no? — Akanthinos

No.

One can attribute/recognize causality long before language acquisition. The fire example...

That's just not true. Take an apple out of an apple pie:It's still an apple despite it's no longer being a part of an apple pie. The apple pie is still an apple pie as well. — creativesoul

Sure, for all practical purposes it is still the same apple. But strictly speaking, by taking the apple out of the apple pie something has changed in the apple: its relations to other things have changed and so it is now different from other things in a different way than when it was in the apple pie. But as I said, this change is negligible for all practical purposes.

No. Differences do not constitute relations. To quite the contrary, relations are existentially dependent upon different things. — creativesoul

There would be no relations between things without things, but also there would be no things without relations between them. Things and relations depend on each other; you cannot have one without the other.

This is what I'm trying to get at in this thread: Is it valid to say that an elephant and a rock and the feeling of looking at a sunset are all merely different names/forms of X (consciousness in this case)? Or do these things 'possess' some sort of essence/identity that make them ultimately unique, despite their all being sublated by consciousness? — rachMiel

You can't derive differences (in thought or in the physical world) from identity. If you have differences, it is because there is some real difference giving rise to them. So, yes, it's rational to conclude that our experiences of elephants and rocks can be traced to irreducible differences in their origins.

It's irrational to think that the variety of our experiences is unreal. At the very least our experiences are part of reality.

You can't derive differences (in thought or in the physical world) from identity. If you have differences, it is because there is some real difference giving rise to them. — Dfpolis

You can. The moment of identity is also the moment of non-identity, so to speak.

I ask you to pick an object at random in the Great Bag of Things that is the world. You reach in and pick A. I ask you to do so once again, and lo and behold! you show A once more.

A is identical to A is identical to A is ... But each instances are different and identifiable. The phenomenal compound of "A on pick 1" and "A on pick 2" are different.

A and A' are not different because they are identical, but because they are made of different atoms and occupy different locations. So, I do not see that you have rebutted my claim that "You can't derive differences (in thought or in the physical world) from identity. If you have differences, it is because there is some real difference giving rise to them."

The problem is that - all by itself - "A=A" is utterly meaningless at best and nonsensical at worst. Laws cannot be either. — creativesoul

The law of Identity is not meaningless, its the basis for the possibility of meaning ever arising and being available. Without it you have no basis of ambiguity and equivocation, which aren't great in academic discourse, but absolutely required for natural languages.

The law of identity is a metacognitive tool that when used properly facilitates clear, meaningful, intelligible, and coherent language use. — creativesoul

If this was so, we would be having a purely epistemological debate, not an ontological one.

The law of identity is a metacognitive tool that when used properly facilitates clear, meaningful, intelligible, and coherent language use. Metacognitive tools are existentially dependent upon language itself, for there can be no thinking about thought and belief if there is not already something to be isolated, named, and subsequently talked about. Thinking about thought and belief is an activity that is existentially dependent upon something to think about(pre-existing thought and belief).

Brute fact: The law of identity owes it's very existence to language.

p1.Whatever does not owe it's existence to language cannot... owe it's existence to language.

The law of identity does.

Not all relations do. — creativesoul

You are clearly equivocating. The law of identity doesn't owe its existence to language, language owe its existence to the law of identity. The object A in the phenomenal compound "A at t1" and A in the phenomenal compound "A at t2" are identical, regardless of the existence of a language that can designate them. That's why we are treating this as an ontological problem and not a philosophy of language one.

A and A' are not different because they are identical, but because they are made of different atoms and occupy different locations. — Dfpolis

That's an example of fallacy by undermining. The A of "A at T1" and "A at T2" are identical because they are the same A, not because of any other attributes such as composition or spatial location.

Attributes and relations do not constitute objects, they reveal something about them.

Where there has never been language, there has never been the "law of identity"...

If you disagree... be my guest. I've nothing further. I've offered an argument. It hasn't been validly objected to. You've offered only gratuitous assertions.

That won't do with me.

You've offered only gratuitous assertions. — creativesoul

You are unfortunately free to see gratuitous assertions wherever you want, but this sort of indignation really isn't appropriate to this conversation.

Where there has never been language, there has never been the "law of identity"... — creativesoul

So logic didn't apply to dinosaurs? :chin:

Not interested. Valid objection against the argument I've presented or a valid argument for your position. Nothing else will suffice.

Not interested. Valid objection against the argument I've presented or a valid argument for your position. Nothing else will suffice. — creativesoul

... :brow: ...

Since you are the one evaluating the validity of the objection, you can this way safeguard yourself against any form of criticism by simply ignoring anything that could be an objection. Which is what you are doing right now.

The law of identity doesn't owe its existence to language, language owe its existence to the law of identity. — Akanthinos

Agree. I think language relies on the ability of the rational mind to abstract and compare. When we say that A=A, by definition we're not talking about this particular A (unless we're comparing typefaces, or kinds of symbolic systems!) But usually what it means, is that 'A' denotes a particular value, so that is why if I have two apples, and two oranges, then I have the same quantity of completely different things.

- I think language relies on the ability of the rational mind to abstract and compare.

To be slightly pedant, language relies on so many things that its complete analysis probably evades us by simply requiring more time than our puny beings can afford to spend. But a priori, yes, abstraction and differentiation seems to be much lower-level than language. An animal can probably associate a smell to a memory by association, then abstract a larger category itself associated with the whole event. Without language, it would be fairly limited in what it could do with such an abstraction, but it would certainly not be a useless cognitive process.

- When we say that A=A, by definition we're not talking about this particular A (unless we're comparing typefaces, or kinds of symbolic systems!) But usually what it means, is that 'A' denotes a particular value, so that is why if I have two apples, and two oranges, then I have the same quantity of completely different things.

Exactly. In the ontological context of the OP, the purpose of bringing up identity was to object mainly to the idea that relations are between different things, but also to the ideas that object are their relations or attributes, or that objects and relations are ontically codependent. They arent, they are codetermined. So in this case me adhering to a preseance of the Law of Identity to language is not a form of idealism. Its simply the statement of a precondition to the specific process that allowed for intelligence to arise. A=A is, in the ontological context, the form of the relation that all (or at least, all available to us) things hold with themselves.

Other statements were made to the effect that you cant get from identity to difference, which is what brought me to use the A=A so as to denote particulars. Because the definition of identity and a layout of the properties necessary to demonstrate its counterfactual is very clearly all that you would need to show that you can get from identity to difference.